Live.com

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Screenshot of Live.com

Live.com is a customizable portal launched by Microsoft in early November 2005. It was one of the first Windows Live services to launch. All online Live services are located in subdomains of Live.com, making the site the recognized home of Microsoft's "Live" movement. Windows Live Ideas is directly linked to from Live.com for a full listing of public Live services.

1 Features
2 History
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Features

Live.com lets users add RSS feeds in order to view news at a glance. Building off Microsoft's start.com experimental page, Live.com can be customized with Gadgets, mini-applications that can serve almost any purpose (e.g. mail readers, weather reports, slide shows, search, games, etc.). Some gadgets integrate with other Windows Live services, including Mail, Search, and Favorites.

Users can create multiple site tabs and customize each with different feeds, gadgets, layouts, and color schemes.

[edit] History

On December 14, 2004, start.com, the predecessor to live.com, began internal testing. On February 5, 2005, the first version, http://www.start.com/1, went live. On March 10 http://www.start.com/2 went live, and on June 3 http://www.start.com/3 went live. On September 1 they released to http://www.start.com/. On September 13 developer sites went live.^[1]

Live.com launched on November 1 with the Windows Live brand and various improvements. By November 8 they had added Firefox support. On November 23 themes were added. On December 15 support for Opera 9, new gadgets, and other improvements went live. On December 20 the search engine was improved. January 27 saw support for images in RSS feeds. On February 28 the search box was updated. On March 7, 2006, live.com was updated with a new look, more gadgets, and an improved interface. It also featured, for the first time, the new Windows Live Search. Features include intelligent scrolling, dynamic image search, and saved searches. On March 30 other improvements were made, especially regarding the first run experience and persistence of search-only mode.

On September 12, 2006, Live.com officially came out of beta. In the following few days, MSN Search began redirecting to the new Windows Live Search, and the rollout was complete.^[2]